Calvin: 0:01

Welcome to the Empowering Healthy Business Podcast, the podcast for small business owners. Your host, Cal Wilder, has built and sold businesses of his own, and he has helped hundreds of other small businesses, whether it is improving sales, profitability, and cash flow, building a sustainable, scalable, and saleable business, reducing your stress level, achieving work-life balance, or improving physical and emotional fitness. Cal and his guests are here to help you run a healthier business and, in turn, have a healthier life.

Calvin: 0:37

Welcome. In this episode we're going to focus around some specific issues in growing a business, and there are two key terms we're going to reference in this episode repeatedly. One of them is scaling, and one of them is visionary. So I'm going to help define what we mean by scaling and then introduce today's guest, Becky Venuti, who runs an executive coaching practice, who will talk about what visionary means for purposes of this episode. So when we start businesses, sometimes we think we'll be happy running a small operation as a solopreneur where we effectively own our own jobs and we don't have a boss, which is kind of nice. Or maybe we grow a little bit bigger and we have an operation where we hire a few helpers, but it's really still mostly you running the business without a lot of risk and stress of trying to grow something big and you keep it at a size that's manageable, where you as the founder know almost everything that's going on in the business and can control whatever you think needs to get done, and there's certainly nothing wrong with that. And a lot of people run very good, very financially healthy, very small businesses. And then others of us may start a business with grander ambitions of building something really big with dozens or hundreds, or even thousands of employees, with a bunch of middle managers and other senior executives. That's big and valuable and worth a lot of money. Right, and at that scale, with other senior executives and middle managers. You know, the founder may try to keep a pulse on the business, but the reality is the business needs to be able to run without the founder's active involvement. Or maybe we start out something very small and then we realize we have an opportunity to really scale the business into something much bigger. And so this process of growing a business to a size that managers other than the founder are in charge of running most of it that's what we're going to call scaling. That's what we mean by scaling in this episode. In more extreme cases, the founder may step back completely from day-to-day involvement and function more as an investor in the business rather than a manager of the business. So now we covered scaling, we'll talk a little bit about two different kinds of founders. One kind of founder maybe falls into more of the technical practitioner category. They may be an engineer, a marketing professional, a doctor. They're experts at doing direct work for customers, and they want to focus on that. On the other hand, we may have visionary founders who don't really want to do a lot of direct customer work, but they've got a huge vision for the business, what it can grow into, and what the business can accomplish. And both kinds of founders work. Both can scale large businesses, although they'll need to go about it in different ways and with different strengths and challenges, and so this episode is really focused on the visionary founder. So, Becky, could you help us understand a little bit more what we mean?

Becky: 3:28

Sure, thanks, Calvin. So you know, visionaries are amazing. They make up 3% of the world, and they are creators of two- thirds of the jobs for us. So we should be very grateful for visionaries and their big ideas for us. So we should be very grateful for visionaries and their big ideas. But what I've seen in coaching and developing teams, especially those who want to scale, is visionaries can really hinder the growth and really the efficiencies of a company. You know, refining processes and trying to filter their ideas. So visionary has typically they're the idea generator. They typically have 20 to 30 ideas a week. Maybe one of them is awesome, but they're always, just always, thinking about the next thing. They see big picture. So they're actually great at knowing and seeing like okay, well, this is really what's going on in our industry. They're very hot into the market and whatever you know, whatever corporation or culture they're a part of, and you know, hey, this is what's happening here and this is what's happening there. They've got a big touch on all of that, but they don't know how to put that into their own business. They sort of think the grandiose is for all and it's not. And then they see the future. Visionaries oftentimes will say things like well, no, we just have to do that. We have to get there. I know this will happen for us. I know that we can get to 40 million a year. I know that the team will look like this and it's like you have a magic eight ball Like how are we going to get? There's always like they want the next best thing, and what I'm seeing with a lot of the visionaries that I work with is they're never happy with the status quo. They're never happy with where they are today, even if they got their business to be where they dreamed it would be when they were little. Now they're here and they want more. They want bigger. They want more locations. They want bigger. They want more locations. They want more people, more accolades. So to get there, you have to surround yourself with the right people and at the foundation of that, you have to know how to manage your finances Like really key, and so that's it's a little bit of a struggle, but the visionaries can create a lot of whiplash. We call them the 90-day roller coaster spikes. So they come back from a big retreat or a conference. They're like hey, I just bought this twenty thousand dollar system. It's gonna like change our whole world. And then after 30 days or 60 days typically 90 the team never hears about that system again. They don't they're? What are we doing with that? Oh, I don't know. Moving on to the next thing, they're so big picture and so visionary mindset that the details, they just bullet them out for them. They don't want to get into the nitty gritty and they certainly don't want to be told no.

Calvin: 6:23

All right. Well, you've covered a lot of ground there in the first couple of minutes, so maybe we can focus on a few of these areas one at a time here. And so one of the things you mentioned is kind of change management and kind of avoiding that guardrail to guardrail management approach where every 90 days you shift, focus on something else, right, and that just wears people out and doesn't give us time to execute on the first idea before we start the second idea, right? So what are some examples you've seen there that have where the founders had some challenges and where they've been able to, how have they gone about keeping themselves under control and not putting the rest of the business under that stress?

Becky: 7:04

Sure, so that's such a great question and I think one of the best answers to that is really a visionary needs an integrator on the team. An integrator is their right-hand person, who is sort of the voice of reason. They're not there to say no, they're more there to say how Okay, that sounds like a great idea. How can we make that happen with the people that we have on the team, our capacity limits and finances? So having that person in the integrator is typically a director of ops or the director of finance. They're usually running the day to day, they know all the nitty gritty and they're sort of the glue to the team. And they're the glue because visionaries are so all over the place and can create whiplash. The team needs somebody who's that steady force. So what I've seen is just the example I gave previously, where visionaries will come back from a big company conference and they're amped up with energy and they're like I just bought we just paid for this awesome new software. It's going to literally bring us more leads, or it's going to get us this and it's going to get us that, and then you've got your ops, your finance person, saying okay, and how much is the investment? Oh, I only signed on for a year. It's 20,000. And you're sitting there going, oh my gosh, we don't have that in our budget, or well, who's going to implement it now? So that's great that you bought a shiny object, but now we actually have to put that into practice. So we have to train people on it. We have to get people to buy into it. You know, get the team to say like, okay, we're going to adopt this new system, we're going to train you. You have to actually start to see is, is this a smart, you know ROI for the, for the business. So trying to stop or I should say, interfere on those triggers of the shiny objects, of the big, exciting things that may work for a different company, especially if they're at a different scale or a different level. And, honestly, if they're in a different company, especially if they're at a different scale or a different level and, honestly, if they're in a different demographic, doesn't always fit in with your team and where you are today, you need that person who's going to ask the how. That's a big, big question.

Calvin: 9:19

Right. You mentioned another word, integrator, which is specific to the EOS framework, the entrepreneurial operating system framework, right, and so in pure EOS, you know, they have a very narrowly defined set of seats. In their version of the org chart they call the accountability chart, and I think the reality is, in smaller businesses that don't have a fully built out management team, people may play different roles and functions and fill two different seats at the same time, and things like that. But I think the main thing you said, though, is there's got to be somebody that kind of buffers the visionary with the rest of the business to help filter out and prioritize what gets implemented and how it gets implemented. What that person's title is exactly is less important than the fact there is somebody there who's kind of the right hand person for the visionary to help prioritize and manage things right.

Becky: 10:11

Yeah, and that person, whether it be the integrator or the operator, whatever you want to call them, the person is also leading, managing and holding people accountable, not just the mid manager team, but also the visionary, you know. Okay. So you said you're going to do, you want to do this. We've got a whole plan and map of how we're going to make it happen. We've got the budget for it. I've, you know, mapped it out. So now I'm going to hold you accountable to building this out, or I'm going to hold you accountable to using this tool, to implementing it into your business and to help guide the team, Because, remember, people want to follow a visionary, Calvin. So it doesn't matter how much money you sent a system and a tool If you're not going to use it as a visionary team. Something like I'm not going to buy into this, this isn't what I'm going to do. He's not using it. She's not using it.

Calvin: 11:02

Right. Another thing I think you mentioned was something around complexity, Becky, allowing the business to become too complex and impossible for folks to kind of get their arms around and execute successfully. I'll just share a quick anecdote in my experience here at SmartBooks there was a point in time when we got in about 30 people or so. I thought it was a great idea that we had different practice areas. We had our QuickBooks small business practice. We were supporting Xero, which is another competitor to QuickBooks, although a lot less popular in the US, and then we had more of a mid-market practice around the intact accounting software and that would be, you know, $25, $50 million kind of clients $25, $50 million kind of clients and so we had multiple accounting software that we were trying to support and different segments of customers that we were trying to support. And we were only 30 people and for me in my head I could see this all laid out very organized and I thought we could do a great job, but we really weren't that big. It was really too confusing for a small business to be trying to support so many different segments at the same time. Ultimately, we paired it back and now we're focused exclusively on the QuickBooks segment and we've developed a great offering for those kinds of clients and so kind of use. An analogy to weeds like complexity is like weeds in a business they're always growing and they're going to overwhelm your garden unless you're always pruning them right, and so you got to be careful about complexity right.

Becky: 12:34

Oh my gosh, I love that, love that phrase. And then another one of my favorite quotes is if everything's important, then nothing's important. And that's a big challenge for visionaries is that every idea they have is the next big idea. This is it. It's going to change the world, it's going to make things happen for us and to your point. I work with these businesses who have big, awesome goals. They're so energizing. I get energized by them. Their team gets somewhat fearful of them because the team is like well, we're the ones who have to make this happen, we're the ones who have to get this done. And how are we going to do that if we don't have somebody at that level in the company, because you can't afford that person, or if we don't have the right resources or tools or we don't have enough people? So people is such a key component to the success and visionaries have to think of people not as an asset but as an investment. I need to make an investment in the right people to get me to where I want to go. So I don't have to deal the no, I get to say yes. And so I love that analogy about the weeds because it is. It's so true they just start throwing so much more out. And I actually I just got off the phone, Calvin, with one of my visionaries who's trying to implement something with his middle managers and the first thing he said to me was like it's so simple, like I don't understand why it's that big of a deal. It's simple, like the context in your mind is simple, like the. The idea is simple, but actually making it happen is time blocking resources. They don't. They're down to players. So I'm like laying it all out, do you want your people spending time on this or do you want them spending time driving the revenue, which is what they've been doing? So a simple idea to a visionary is like a monstrosity to a team that is not prepared or doesn't have the manpower, women power to get there.

Calvin: 14:39

Right, so let's talk about what visionaries can do to help invest in their people and help put them in a position to be successful. Right? So what are? If we could kind of focus on a few of those areas, what have you seen that works well?

Becky: 15:26

That are going to say yes to you. That is not what this is about. Like, if you wanted to be a rock star, then go play in a band and stand on stage. That's not where we are. You're building a business, so you have to find. First you have to look in the mirror and know, okay, this is what I'm awesome at, this is what I. Everybody comes to me too. And then you have to look in the mirror and say this is what I'm not good at and I need to find somebody who's just as passionate about those things as I am about my passion. So there are, believe it or not, people out there that are super passionate about finance, sustaining numbers and account and accounting. Like there are people that love you're not good at that, so stay out of your lane. And then there are people that love to manage. People like love to run the day-to-day business and deal with checklists. So you have to surround yourself first with some top people, and one of the most instrumental hires you can make outside of an integrator who, to your point earlier, is usually like your head of marketing or your head of sales, because you're not going to be able to just have a sole integrator is somebody to help you with your finances. Because I come into these teams, Calvin, and they hire me and the first question I say to them is can you afford me? I can't afford not to have you. Great answer, Love that, but can you afford what I'm going to bring to you in terms of ideas of bringing new people on or, you know, getting consolidating software and da da, da? So they have no idea. I mean, some of these people have never looked at a P&L. They literally have said I don't want to directly quote this person in case he hears it but somebody had said to me once well, I had enough money, I mean, I made enough profit to, you know, go away and go on vacation. And I was like that's, that's not strategic, like that is not going to get you to the next place. So and I think to some to, to wrap up, they're afraid of that finance person because they know that person's going to tell them no and they're going to put restraint on them. But a finance person's not there to put restraint. They're there to guide you so that you make smart, strategic decisions about what is going to be best for the scalability of your company.

Calvin: 17:44

Right. I mean a lot of the clients we start engaging with. They're similar to you described. Quickbooks is a little bit of a mess. The chart of accounts isn't organized in a way that presents very meaningful financial reporting. There's no defined set of scorecard metrics that are getting reviewed on a regular basis, and so the owners may have a gut sense based on how much cash is coming in and out of the bank account, how the business is doing or what the sales pipeline looks like. But unfortunately there's not really rigorous financial reporting in there. It's just like basic monthly metrics, let alone kind of forward-looking forecasts. So I think step one is really getting a handle on QuickBooks or whatever accounting software they're using to be able to produce a financial statement that they can look at and then parse out a few financial metrics. So what's the gross profit margin percentage? What's our overhead as a percentage of revenue? What's our year over year growth rates? You know is looking at the cash flow statement. Are we successfully converting the reported profit into positive cash flow into the bank account? It's usually the first step, kind of understanding what the current business performance looks like and then, once we get a handle on that, we can start to plan for the future and make decisions? How do we move the needle with some of these metrics that aren't quite where we want them to be, and that's hard. It's hard for small businesses to fill that finance role because there's certainly not enough work to do to employ a full-time senior controller or CFO, but they need more than a bookkeeper. So that's just a hard. That's a hard thing for small businesses.

Becky: 19:16

No, and that's and that's what I love, Calvin, about fractional services, like fractional financial services, and I talked to a lot of my teams about fractional HR and fractional financial because when you're a small company and you are trying to grow, there's also, you know, it's hard to have somebody in your organization who is the controller of your finances and or has all the ins and outs of the books. There can you can have animosity, there could be a lot of confusion and again, that's really kind of tight to the visionary's chest. Like wait a minute, I don't want this person to know. So hiring a fractional company who has the right people to understand but to also have kindness in presentation of, okay, so you just spent $15,000 on whatever. You didn't have that money. So now we have to do some readjusting. And they take I found when I work with them that they take this sort of empathetic approach and then say, okay, what are we going to shift around? What are we going to change? Like let's get down to brass tacks here. Like we need to make some changes. And the cash forecasting is crucial, especially in a business where there's seasonality or restructuring, because knowing what you have, you know and again, it's a forecast and, like we know, in new England forecast is not always right, so you have to be prepared for that too. But understanding, what should you have in your reserves? What do you need to have to just carry your business month to month? So many people don't know that and it scares me. And then I start to see ships burning, like I have to let this person go because I can't afford them, or I have to do this, and it's like a flash fire sale of like everything good. And then that's when the team loses trust in you.

Calvin: 21:04

You is to position people for success within your organization. Another big thing I've seen is the need for systems and processes. People used to say to me, as a founder, you need to accept the fact people you hire are only going to be 80% as good at something as I am, and that's okay and I think about that and over the years, maybe for certain technical proficiencies, that may be true. But I think there's potentially also a blind spot there, because founders have blind spots and I think they may assume whoever they hire is not going to be as good as them. But the reality is people you hire probably have other strengths that you don't have and you might not appreciate that they're better than you at other things. But back to the systems and process. As part of it, you know the systems and processes put the people in position to be successful. They know what they're supposed to do. There's consistency, right. So you know, if you're a visionary founder who's looking to scale and is looking to be able to hire people and have them be successful, how do you recommend they go about defining and implementing those key systems and processes?

Becky: 22:13

Great question. One is get those people who are excellent at it involved in the development of it. Please do not try to create a process for somebody else in your organization when you are not the expert in that area. So this is where a team you know, team input and trust really matters. Sit around a table and talk about the marketing process or the listing process or whatever process, the HR process. Talk about it with the experts in your team. Have them be a part of the development of it. Because I'm a mom of three kids, I oftentimes compare things to my children. But, believe it or not, children actually like processes, they like structure and they like to know what is expected of them and to be held accountable, because accountability isn't just negative, accountability is also very positive. Like. You're doing a great job. Keep up the good work. Yes, that's what I expected of you and I'm so glad you delivered. And when you have processes and systems in place, people know what they need to do. I don't know if you know the human energy model, but when it's like off track, it looks like it's like a bunch of arrows going in 20,000 different directions, and I walk into some of these teams, Calvin, and I say, well, what does this person do over here? And everybody's in a silo, everyone's just like, oh, I'm just doing my thing, I'm just doing my thing. So you might have seven account managers and they're all just doing their thing. But if you have one exceptional account manager, don't you want to emulate that? Don't you want everybody to do what's the best for that? So then when you get the human energy model aligned, which is very cultural, it's a very intentional culture of vision traction. What's the expectation? Where are the processes? Everybody starts rolling in the same direction. So if something goes awry, it's because they weren't following the process. You can always it's not about the part it's like that client got me off process or the visionary is typically the one that gets you off process. So you know it can come back to that foundation. But having those guidelines and I really love the word process, because everything we do in business is a process and it can always be changed and refined this is not something you're like mounting on the wall every quarter or every whatever is going on in the world. Sometimes that has to adjust a process, but ultimately it's a safe tool where people know okay, this is where we are in the process, and this is what has to happen next.

Calvin: 24:46

And I think the visionaries tend to underestimate the importance of training, initially as well as ongoing. Like in my business, we'll do financial reviews with clients and since I'm a finance guy who's 48 years old and has done a lot of financial analysis, I can sit down like half hour, kind of wing it, put together a good analysis, meet with the client, impress them, deliver a lot of insight and look good. Most of the time I think Maybe I'm overconfident, but that's not what most people within the organization can do and it's an unrealistic expectation. We've got to define the system and process, like you said, and then we've got to train on it, we've got to practice it, we've got to have the right templates.

Becky: 25:28

You have to measure on it.

Calvin: 25:30

And since you mentioned the kids analogy, I get two boys and when they were a little bit younger I get so annoyed on how they close doors in the house. They'd either slam the door or they just kind of pull it halfway and it wouldn't really close. I'm like why can't you close the door like a normal person? But I realized, you know, nobody ever showed them how you properly close a door. So you show them how to properly close a door and now they know how to close the door. Sometimes you just can't assume it's obvious to everybody, especially if it's the first time they're doing something.

Becky: 26:02

I love that you touched upon the training because you know, I I hear so much from there. It's like, well, it's so easy, like they just have to just follow. It's like Google it or or, or look at this, um, well, she's doing it. Why can't he do it? And it's like, well, in EOS, the entrepreneurial operating, the goal of a process is it's FBA, followed by all, and the followed by all checklist is that people are trained. Whether you need to be trained or not, everybody's trained together so that questions can be asked along the way to those who are experts in it. You need to measure. So is this really the right process? Are we getting it done efficiently? Do we have the data to back it up? And then people need to be held. They need to be led, managed and held accountable to that process, and then you update it. So this is always cyclical matter of, and it's the same thing. I love your analogy about the boys because it's like same thing with my daughter, like tying her shoes, like it's a process. You sit down, you put yourself like there's literally steps to everything we do in life and just so intuitively we know how to do so many things, but not everybody has the institutional knowledge that you and I are in our world. So you need to train them, you need to give them that kindness to set them up for success.

Calvin: 27:17

I guess along these lines as well, once we've defined processes and we've done some training, and now we're in a position to really start delegating responsibility to people. And that's something else that I've struggled with and a lot of people struggle with is how do you effectively delegate work to somebody else? Because it's not like you're just abdicating the work and getting off your plate and never worrying about it again and expecting it to be done perfectly. And it's not micromanaging the whole process, because why bother delegating if you're still going to micromanage everything, unless it's training? Initially, we spend a lot of time with somebody, and so we spend a lot of time at SmartBooks talking about what are the keys to effective delegation. And so, when that comes down to really communication, if we're delegating a piece of work to somebody or a responsibility to somebody, we want to make sure we explain to them why the work is important. What is the specific work that needs to get done? When do we want that work done? By? Who are we doing this work for? How are we going to evaluate the success of the work? Is there anything we know about this piece of work that could impact the difficulty or success or ability to get it done on time. And then how do we want to be notified of progress? You know what are the check-in points along the way. I'm a believer in process quality assurance, where you know there's a few check-ins along the way to make sure the work is getting done properly, headed in the right direction. I don't want to wait until the end of a day or a week, or a month or a quarter to get a finished product, only to find out it's not done as I expected it to be done, and that's like the worst, because the individual wasted their time, the work itself didn't get done well, and now I'm kind of frustrated. So those are some of the keys to delegation that we've identified at SmartBooks.

Becky: 29:08

No, and those are excellent. I mean, you kind of said it all having a roadmap and those check in points. So having weekly meetings with an agenda and scorecarding and talking about your rocks or your to do's or whatever it is the project that you're working on and where you are in the process. I don't like when people just say like, yeah, I'm on track with that. Well, what does on track mean? What? What point are you in that project? Do you have any concerns Like what's working, what's not working, what are the roadblocks? So, with the delegate to elevate tool, when you're trying to learn about your people and see where their strengths are, there's great assessment tools like the Colby, a report, or strengths finder, the working genius. These are all great resources that can help you understand on paper who the people are in your organization. But the other thing is just ask them what they're great at and what they love to spend their time doing. And so when you delegate to Elevate, it truly is that for both parties, you're delegating to elevate yourself, but you're also delegating to elevate that person into what they're best at and they'll have a lot of pride. People actually like to be given something to do that they're great at, as opposed to people who just want to be told what to do and it's not something they're passionate about something they're passionate about, right, I guess.

Calvin: 30:29

One other topic I wanted to bring up here and get your perspective on is this idea that visionaries think they can be good at everything, and some visionaries maybe they are exceptional human beings and they are good at everything, but their reality is businesses cannot be good at everything and most individuals cannot be good at everything, and so you probably read Francis Fry's book about strategically figuring out what a business can be good at and what it's okay being bad at, from the context of defining your business strategy. And so, for example, there's that old saying you can be good, fast or cheap. You can have any two of those, but not all three. Right? You can't have a really high quality product at a really low price, maybe, unless you're willing to wait a long time to receive it or get it manufactured, or something like that right. And so there are all these attributes that your business, your service offering, your product offering could have, but it's impossible to check the box on all of those, and so visionaries, I think, struggle a little bit with giving up and accepting the fact their business is just not going to be very good at certain things that don't really matter to their target customer right. So talk to me about your experience with this whole issue.

Becky: 31:35

Yeah, it's such a great experience, a great thought. Because, you know, I think visionaries are constantly comparing themselves to others, whereas integrators or some people in the organization are just comparing themselves in the organization to where they were last year or how far they've come. The visionaries are always looking outside and above and beyond to be like, well, we're not there yet. Oh my gosh, look at what this company is doing. Why aren't we doing that? Why aren't we here? And there's so much comparison going on, and I actually don't think that they think they're great at everything. I think that they think they know about everything. It's that big picture mentality. Well, I know about this. Well, how do you know about that? Because I talked to this person and they're doing it this way. There's a lot of these outside voices coming in into companies, and I don't mean like they are coming in, but I mean like you know all the voices in a visionary's head of like, well, this person does it this way and he told us we should do it this way. And I'm like well, those people are in Texas, or well, that company is a $50 million company and you're just a $5 million company. You know, we're not on the same level, so the comparison can be quite detrimental to that progress. And so I think you know. Ultimately, what I really try to tell my teams is that you have to work together to understand where you are today and where you want to go. Your path will be very different than somebody else's path. I totally couldn't agree with you more. I was trying to think about what I knew was good, fast and cheap. I can't think of anything. Yes.

Calvin: 33:15

All right, so I think we've covered some really good topics around how visionary founders can overcome blind spots as part of scaling their business. Before we wrap up, Becky, is there anything else you'd like to mention around this topic?

Becky: 33:30

I just think that visionaries, again, are really special people. I think sometimes people think like, oh, I don't want to be called the visionary. That sounds so hokey. You're like, I'm not just about, but no, you're exceptional and you have such incredible ideas. But please surround yourself with people that will help execute and manage those ideas and will get you to the finish line, because there's nothing more frustrating than have a thousand thoughts and nothing gets implemented and completed. So get those people around you that like to check off some lists and feel that sense of accomplishment and supporting you and your goals.

Calvin: 34:07

That's great, Becky. So you've got a coaching business. Tell me what your focus is there, what kind of businesses, business owners you work with, what you do for them, how that works.

Becky: 34:24

Awesome. Yes, my company's call ed BV Coaching very original Be cky Venuti Coaching. I decided not to be a visionary and try to think of something creative because I just wanted to get going. But I do partner mainly with smaller teams. Smaller companies five to say, 75 employees who are looking to scale their businesses. Ideally, my partners are either running on EOS or traction or they're looking for refinement and processes and scaling as well as leadership development. So I have fractional integrator roles in three companies now. So those three companies are running on EOS and they are visionaries that do not have an integrator. So I come in and I play the integrator role there, so I'm a part of their business for about 30 hours a month running meetings and holding people accountable and holding the visionary accountable to making sure that I'm looking out for the best of the greater good of the organization and not just what the visionary wants to happen. And I always tell them all the first meeting I'm not your yes person, so if that's who you're looking for, you're not going to get that in me. I am going to always be looking out for what's happening around you and how I can help everybody move forward in that same direction. And then I do coaching accountability so I do have clients that I do coaching with. It's about two hours a week and it's usually I partner with an integrator to help coach them. Or sometimes it's just the visionary or people in leadership that need a lot of coaching around difficult conversations, crucial conversations that will make an impact on the company, refining processes and holding them accountable. And then I run workshops and team development and leadership, and for me it's really about marrying the people in the processes and just bringing a lot of clarity and control to what is typically a very chaotic environment from most of the teams that I walk into.

Calvin: 36:20

Okay, and if a listener wants to get in touch with you directly, what's the best way for them to do that?

Becky: 36:26

Awesome. They can visit beckyvenuti. com, so that's V, as in Victor, e-n-u-t-i. com, or they can email me at becky@ beckyvenuti. com

Calvin: 36:36

Great Well, thank you so much for your time and sharing your insights today. Becky Really enjoyed it.

Becky: 36:41

Thanks, Calvin. I really appreciate it. Have a great day you too. Thanks.

Calvin: 36:48

Reference show notes and find other episodes on empowering healthy business. com If you would like to have a one-on-one discussion with me or possibly engage smart books to help with your business, you can reach me at Cal C-A-L at empowering healthy business. com or message me on LinkedIn, where I am easy to find. Until next time. This is Empowering Healthy Business the podcast for small business owners. Signing off.